Oregon Trail

Mat Benson sat across from me in 4^th grade, where on the roof of my mouth, I would daily trace, with my tongue, the cursive letters of his name displayed on his placard, laminated to the top of his wooden desk with cold metal legs. Not because I had a crush on him, or because he had an alliterative name, of course. But because I was so bored.

On rainy days we had the option to stay inside during recess, and being somewhat of an indoor kid, always thrilled me as I would run to the computer lab, log on to an apple computer, use almost the entire recess to watch the game boot up and then play about 3 minutes of the Oregon Trail game. Probably the best and most vivid memories of my elementary school.

Mrs. Simon, my teacher, had a severe bob hair cut and always wore white, silken, and slightly opaque blouses tucked into her high fastening slacks. Her bras were mazes of lace and straps and elastic and fabric, and stared at her boobs for at least a few hours a day. I certainly didn’t know what that thing was or why she needed it, but I had a feeling that I might need to know where to get one someday and I wanted to have it memorized. She had a nervous habit of shaking her foot to the point where I was concerned it was going to come off. She also had a face so caked in foundation and powder that once, while writing vocabulary words on the overhead, she really got her foot going and instead of her shoe flying off, a small piece of her face actually fell on to the overhead slide. There are many words I still can’t spell because of that incident.

Mrs. Simon announced with some enthusiasm, which was rare for her, that we were going to have a hands on and interactive unit on survival and the Oregon Trail. I was so eager about this, I spent that whole night laying in bed thinking of who from my class I would want in my wagon and who I hoped got typhoid fever.

We saw many videos on the subject of survival; the one that stuck out for me was where a man told us how, if you get lost in the woods after swimming with your family, stay where you are, take off your clothes to get dry, cover yourself in tree sap and roll around in dirt so you don’t get a sunburn and so you aren’t naked and that if you had a small piece of surgical tubing, some plastic wrap and a day or two, you could actually purify your own pee so you could drink it and stay alive. I would like to know what that video is called and could one request it on Netflix?

Our culminating activity for this unit was to go an a survival trip where we put our new found skills suck as building shelters to the test. None of the people I wanted in my wagon were selected to be on my survival team and I spent the entire bus ride out to the forest hoping Mrs. Simon forgot her sack lunch and that she would be hungry all day long!

We started out with our entire class and group by group, we were dropped off into these foresty little nooks where we would be retrieved by Mrs. Simon in a few hours. I doubt there are many public schools now-a-days where parents would allow their children to be dropped off in the woods, sans adult supervision, with 5 other 10 year olds. But I’m not a parent so what do I know?

Mat Benson, the boy who sat across from me at school was on my survival team. We had 2 hours to produce our shelter for our final grade. We had learned about almost every kind of shelter. Wig-wam, Tee Pee, various huts, so when Mat Benson piped up that our team should make an igloo a few of our team members seemed perturbed. Aside from the fact that it was June, and an 80 degree day, all I could think of was not that erecting an igloo would prove impossible, but how we were going to get to a place that had snow, get it all back here and make the igloo in time. Luckily there were 3 other kids on the team that were not smarter, but more practical than us and dictated that we would be making a Lean To.

I’m pretty sure none of these kids liked me, but Mrs. Simon told us we were allowed to bring large scissors, so when I whipped out a pair of hedge trimmers from my Portland Trailblazers’ duffle bag I had liberated from my parents gardening shed, my popularity climbed.

I was assigned the task of cutting branches. Just cut branches off a low, young conifer, plain and simple. Mat Benson then took the branches I cut over to the clearing where our other team mates assembled them into our Lean To. I felt confused because on the Oregon Trail game, the players just slept in their wagons and never built any shelters, but I wasn’t going to argue because this was pretty fun. So, on we went until I had just about stripped this poor tree of all its branches for our Lean To no one would ever have to attempt to survive in. Mat Benson reached for the last, rather girthy branch just as I had prepared to chomp through it with my trimmers. Sadly for him, the timing just didn’t work out in his favor because by the time I noticed that was the top of his right middle finger popping off and becoming air born, it was clearly to late. The piece of that finger landed close to our Lean To, nail side down and Mat and I stared at it for a few very long seconds. The other teammates were looking at it too and were trying to discern if it was a berry? Was it a piece of a carrot? A discarded bite of hot dog? Because it certainly couldn’t be a finger top? Mat Benson then exclaimed a few colorful words and ran up the path to find help. In all the videos we’d watched I hadn’t learned how to survive the trouble I was going to get into for bringing the stolen hedge trimmers. I gingerly placed them back into my duffle bag, sat down on it and watched as my team mates lie on the forest floor, rocking and crying in front of a half assembled Lean To and part of a finger. Was I still going to get to ride the bus home, I wondered?

No bus for me. I was driven back to school by a parent chaperone and placed in the school nurse’s office. I had never been in there when I wasn’t sick before, which made me feel instantly sick so I lay down. I started to feel bad, really bad about Mat Benson and wondered what kind of a boy he was. I had never talked to him much and thought maybe I wouldn’t have been so bored in Mrs. Simon’s class if I would have passed notes with him or typed in 8008 in my calculator to make him laugh.

I sat up on the nurse’s cot and sat the phone in my lap. I dialed my Mom’s number, not sure if anyone had informed her yet and she picked up on the third ring.

“Hi Mom,” pause. Pause more. “Did Mrs. Simon call you? Really? No? Well, I might be in trouble, can you come get me? No, nothing like that. I guess I just sort of cut,” triple pause, “Mat Benson’s finger off on our field trip. Yeah, I think I need to come home.”

I sat alone for twenty more minutes in the room, pulling back the wrapper from the paper thermometers and took my temperature over and over until I heard the screech of our Aerostar van pull up to the school office. It was the early nineties and I could actually hear my Mom’s perm get out of the car and slam the door.

I was glad there were only 3 days left 4^th grade.

Please don't walk on me.

*Disclaimer. The year was 2006, and yes, it actually happened.

After a rousing night of YouTube viewing, I decided to finally hit the hay around 3:30 AM. After getting cozy and comfortable between the sheets, I realized the fan was still in the window, positioned for a much hotter night than it actually was, so I hollered to my then-boyfriend, "When you come to bed will you please take the fan out of the window and then shut it?" "Sure, I'm only gonna be about 5 more minutes..." He responded.
Roughly 30 minutes later I was slightly awoken by a little rustle, I felt boyfriend crawling into bed. "Hi," I said, to no reply. I gently opened my eyes and peeked at what a thought would be a drowsy and slightly tipsy boyfriend, when in return there was an enormous, furry, and extremely confused opossum walking on my chest.
Of course I screamed, which prompted boyfriend to sprint in, he screamed, as we both stole glances at each other and then at the offending beast through our panic.
I jumped up and down on he bed for a while and boyfriend repeatedly asked me, "What am I supposed to do?" To which I responded, "Hmm...Get it out?!" " But, what am I supposed to do?" And well, my response was predictable.
So, this charade lasted for roughly an hour, experimenting with a myriad of online remedies, (clap loudly at it, flash a light on it, yell at it, wave an ammonia soaked rag at it, etc.) all to no avail.
I attempted calling the non-emergency police line, (Animal Control only had you leave a message in case of emergency, which made me wonder, what if you were stuck in a car with a loose jaguar or being attacked in a barn by vampire bats? Just leave a message?) and as I was explaining the story to the operator, boyfriend yelled, "It laid down on its back and opened it's mouth at me!" (Gross.) The operator, unfortunately was not much of a help, but, I did finally say, "Well, don't you at least think it's sick that it walked on me?" And he laughed and said, "Yes, very." So, since I felt validated and hung up.
Finally, we made a little path out of all the furniture in the entire apartment which led right out the front door with the plan of sweeping it back into the wild. Genious.
SO...I stood on the bed, holding the broom as far as I possibly could away from my body, than took a gentle swing at the frightened beast and shooed him a few inches. The animal looked me with an ah-ha gaze that said, "Ohhhh, you want me to leave. Why didn't you just say so." And slowing strolled down the makeshift furniture road and out the door.
And that's why you should never sleep with your windows open.

Seasonal Work

Several years ago, I accidently worked at Lloyd Center for a few months. I suppose it was an adventure of sorts. I broke up a couple girl fights, purchased many shiny accessories and made friends with the manger at Mrs. Fields and proceeded to eat a cookie cup (if you don't know what it is, find out, fast,) each shift. And, as you may guess, I have countless tales from the good ol' days, but one in particular sticks out in my mind, for it was very traumatizing.

So, in the store I worked, (like most stores in Lloyd Center, aka the Murder Mall since like, 8 people have been shot there,) we had a bit of a shoplifting problem. It was my sport to try to catch them and prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law, (even though I didn't give a care if they stole from us, I was just bored.) Two main problems arose from this, firstly, there are apparently laws in place so employees can't go around accusing people of shoplifting without extreme probabal cause. Secondly, those girls could always run faster than me.

Anyhow, there was a girl who I had seen shoplift at least 11 times and this was the last straw, I was going to catch her with her pants down, or at least with pants up her shirt. And that's just what she did, except she was shoving pants, and anyother item her sticky fingers could grasp and nonchalantly stuffing them into the bottom of her stroller. Bitch's gots guts was my mantra as I walked towards our most notorious thief. As I neared her, I think she actually grew, for I became increasingly more afraid of her with each step. How can I approch this situation and still keep my life? I'll talk to her baby! Genius! She can't morph into the She-Hulk or even think I'm on to her if I am just chatting up her baby! Great.
So, I lean down and grab on to her baby's little, teeny foot, "Hi baby! Aren't you cute! Look at your little shoes!" And with all the motherly love one can imagine she says,

"Girl, my baby don't wanna look at you! You ugly!"

Oh yes she did. I rose with anger pulsing through my veins knowing I was about to stop the meanest, most flagrant shoplifter Lloyd Mall had ever seen...but when I spoke, the only words I could muster were meekishly,


"Oh...sorry."


That day, she walked out with the pants, and I walked out without pride. It was a normal day for all of us.

On the Edge of Seven

I never wanted to annoy my parents, but I seemed to have been a child that was a masters course unto herself, of how to get parents to eye roll, under the breath curse, head shake, deep breathe and ground me. But when I was that annoying child, my Dad owned this magical van conversion company, Sassi Chassi, (yes, that was really the name,) which, clearly, was my favorite place to hang out when I was a kid. I passed the time convincing the shop workers to give me cans of spray paint and allow me to deface scrap metal and plywood. Or, upon one life-changing day, finding the keys to the vending machine, where I would unlock the money drawer, steal some, then insert it back into the machine to get my snack of choice, generally animal cookies. Technically speaking, Sassi Chassi was the locale of my first job. When I was 4, I would spend hours rendering some museum worthy pictures with my trusty felt tips and the kid-friendly receptionist made the mistake of teaching this savvy 4 year old how to use the copy machine. After making roughly 26938 copies of my hands, face, elbows, brothers, and inanimate objects, I finally made copies of my latest masterpieces and sold them at the door, disarming customers for the tiny fee of 5 cents.
One fateful, rainy afternoon, my brother and I were snooping around the attic, searching for a treasure chest, relics of the old world, or at least some Fritos, but we discovered nothing more than trophies of my dad's beer softball league and some all softballs. I proceeded to immediately ruin our fun by throwing the softball upon the unfinished, insulate-y and treacherous side of the attic. My dad had warned us to never step foot onto that side of the attic and I can't tell you how amazingly seductive that made it for me. "I'll get the ball," I exclaimed, as I had one foot off the finished deck, my brother cackled, somehow knowing what was about to happen. As I was plummeting through the ceiling, 15 feet down to the middle of Sassi Chassi's showroom, I was debating over what I would tell my soon to be furious father. Not only was there now an Amy shaped hole in the ceiling, but during my belly flop I had managed to break the wires that were bracing up the latest models of luxury bug-shields, each of them hitting me in the face on their way down to the concrete floor. I looked up from whence I came and saw my brother's chubby face peering down with a look that captured worry partnered with extreme glee. My father bounded from his office, and matched the befuddled customers' agape jaws and simply asked with a furrowed brow, "What happened?" It was the moment of truth, the climax where I could prove I was wise beyond my years and simply fess up to my mistake. But this is not how I roll at 25 and was certainly not the way I rolled when I was seven, so I lied my ass off. "I was just sitting here playing hide-and-go-seek with my Spenser and all of the sudden all this stuff just came crashing down on me." I looked skyward and saw my brothers' head, still glued to its earlier position of, and I said, "Oh, dang, looks like he found me, gotta go, it's my turn to count!" Although this did amuse some of the customers, my Dad was not as impressed, and he snatched me up and flung me into the bed of his truck, where I proceeded to massage fiber glass insulation into my eyes, all the way home, where I showered away a sliver of my shame. Amazingly, I escaped the fall with only minor injuries, most of which only affecting my ego, and needless to say, I haven't been fond of attics since.